The Impact of Citizens’ Assemblies on Democratic Resilience: Evidence from the Field

Workshop on Deliberative Innovations
Humboldt Governance Lab

Tim
Wappenhans

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Bernhard
Clemm

GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

Felix
Hartmann

Copenhagen Business School

Heike
Klüver

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

July 15, 2025

Motivation

Anti-democratic sentiment

nbcnews.com

Antidote

Democratic deliberative events

Literature review and research gap

Citizens’ Assemblies

  • promise to strengthen democratic resilience

But

  • limited empirical evidence
    • pre-post design
    • often initiated by researchers
  • lack of concept specification
    • what’s resilience?
  • normative concerns
    • bypassing democratic institutions
    • reproducing inequalities

Preview


What we do

  • large-scale field intervention in Germany (pre-reg)
  • moderated citizens’ assemblies w/ MPs, no formal policy recommendations
  • match treated (n=435)
    to control units (n=2,675)

What we find

  • large, robust effects on democratic resilience
    • political trust
    • political efficacy
    • civic engagement
    • reduced susceptibility to
        conspiracy thinking

Theoretical Background

Democratic Resilience

a system’s capacity to withstand, adapt to, or recover from shocks while preserving its principles (Merkel and Lührmann 2021; Holloway and Manwaring 2023)

  • previously focus on macro (institutions) and meso (parties) levels

  • we hold resilience to be a citizen-level capacity

  • citizens’ attitudinal and behavioral resources preserving democracy in times of crisis

    • climate change
    • pandemics
    • technological disruption

Expectations

Citizens’ Democratic Resilience

The case

Field intervention

Hallo Bundestag

  • MPs deliberating with
    \(\approx\) 25 constituents
  • 6 electoral districts
  • 17 events
  • 8 hours
  • vetted info material
  • national political topics
  • trained mediators
  • deliberating
    \(\neq\) deciding ⚠️

Distinct Design

  • better representation
    • door visits to enforce random selection
  • better deliberation
    • facilitated through trained moderators
    • combination of vertical and horizontal deliberation
  • compatible with democratic institutions
    • perspective getting, no policy proposals

Citizens’ Assembly Structure

Session Activities
Welcome - Welcoming participants
- Ice-breakers
Small Groups (Morning) - Active Listening Exercises
- Discussions and topic selection for the afternoon
Plenary (Pre-Lunch) - Presentation of group topics
- Formation of discussion groups
Small Groups (Afternoon) - Problem definition
- Solution development
Plenary (MP Discussion) - Welcoming MPs
- Group presentations and discussions with MPs
Concluding Session - Feedback and reflections

Treatment

Welcome (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Icebreakers (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Topics for afternoon (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Topic selection (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Deliberation w/ MPs (Erfurt-Weimar)

Treatment

Deliberation w/ MPs (Erfurt-Weimar)

Analytical Strategy

Matching

Two-sample approach

  • residence register: legally bound to one specific objective
    • two separately drawn random samples
    • closely mimicking NGO’s approach
  • match participants (Xu and Yang 2022)
    • 8 covariats (preregistered)
  • ATT estimated using:

\[ Y_i = \alpha + \beta \text{Treatment}_i + \gamma X_i + \epsilon_i \]

Descriptives

Participation

Covariate balance

Results

Main specification

Results for individual items Appendix

Internal valdity

Results not driven by selection

  • selection
    • exclude 40% of control who wouldn’t participate
  • within-subject changes Appendix
    • mirror matching results
  • sensitivity Appendix
    • confounder needs to be 11x strong as political interst

Heterogeneity: Vertical Deliberation

Heterogeneity: Vertical Deliberation

Results for individual items Appendix

Takeaway 🥡

Results of citizens’ assemblies

Democratic resilience

  • increase trust, efficacy, engagement
  • reduce conspiracy thinking

Real world implications

  • scalable
  • not in conflict with democratic institutions

Open questions

  • causal effect of vertical deliberation?
  • spillover through multipliers or backlash?
  • longevity?



Get in touch

🌐 timwappenhans.com

🦋 @timwapps.bsky.social

📬 tim.wappenhans@hu-berlin.de

References

Boulianne, Shelley. 2018. “Mini-Publics and Public Opinion: Two Survey-Based Experiments.” Political Studies 66 (1): 119–36.
Fishkin, James S., Valentin Bolotnyy, Joshua Lerner, Alice Siu, and Norman Bradburn. 2024. “Can Deliberation Have Lasting Effects?” American Political Science Review, 1–21.
Gastil, John, E Pierre Deess, Phil Weiser, and Jordan Meade. 2008. “Jury Service and Electoral Participation: A Test of the Participation Hypothesis.” The Journal of Politics 70 (2): 351–67.
Holloway, Josh, and Rob Manwaring. 2023. “How Well Does ‘Resilience’ Apply to Democracy? A Systematic Review.” Contemporary Politics, January. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13569775.2022.2069312.
Krakowski, Krzysztof, Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, and Davide Morisi. 2024. “Does School Debating Reduce Vulnerability to Misinformation? A Field Experiment in Poland.”
Merkel, Wolfgang, and Anna Lührmann. 2021. “Resilience of Democracies: Responses to Illiberal and Authoritarian Challenges.” Democratization 28 (5): 869–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2021.1928081.
Xu, Yiqing, and Eddie Yang. 2022. “Hierarchically Regularized Entropy Balancing.” Political Analysis, 1–8.

Appendix

Mirrored sampling

Treatment group

  • random sample
  • describe costs and benefits
  • invite to citizens’ assembly
  • knock on door 🚪
  • survey (\(t_0\), \(t_1\), \(t_2\))
    • n=435

Control group

  • random sample
  • describe costs and benefits
  • invite to survey
  • knock on door 🚪
  • survey (\(t_1\))
    • n=2,675

Trust

Back to Main

Internal efficacy

Back to Main

External efficacy

Back to Main

Conspiracy thinking

Back to Main

Sensitivity analysis

Back to Internal validity

Within-subject design

Back to Internal validity

Trust

Back to Main

Internal efficacy

Back to Main

External efficacy

Back to Main

civic engagement

Back to Main

Conspiracy thinking

Back to Main